Demographic decline: Greece faces alarming population collapse | Hacker News Reader

Demographic decline: Greece faces alarming population collapse

euronews.com

49 pointstoomuchtodo78 comments

How I hate the title's framing. Greece has no population problem; it has an economic problem. Greeks have not given up on sex; they are simply responding to economic incentives, the same as people everywhere. The interviewed economist, Nikos Vettas, said as much; they just need to increase the country's productivity. If the economy grew at a respectable rate 5̶-̶1̶0̶%̶/̶y̶e̶a̶r̶ instead of flatlining since 2008, they would have no problem.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...

You also have to make sure that some meaningful fraction of the rewards for those productivity gains actually go to the general population — rather than being captured by a tiny fraction at the top of the socioeconomic ladder. Otherwise you get Elon Musk with 11 kids but a broad-based demographic decline.

Greece has no qualms about redistributing wealth. Their sin is going too far in the other direction and not supporting business-friendly policies.

But according to the OCED, the gini coefficient actually dropped slightly from 2010, indicating that it's actually gotten more equal.

https://data-explorer.oecd.org/vis?df[ds]=DisseminateFinalDM...

It would surprise me if Elon didn't have 11 kids even if he wasn't rich. Sperm private sperm donors are a thing and many hit double digits.

That's 5-10% growth a year for over 15 years. That's a huge compounding problem.

Planning for stability is something that we as a species need to adapt to socially. Unless there's new room for growth like expanding robot mining to the asteroids or to solar panels in space. Eternal Growth just isn't sustainable.

there's no need for jousting at infinities.

as long as there are houses to insulate, jobs to specialize in, unread overnment papers to stop printing, inefficiencies to solve, there's economic growth possible.

the problem is that Greece is a poster child for the EU's problems (and of "developed economies")

it's the state/regional version of the middle-income trap, no one wants to do big projects, because relatively everything is expensive in developed economies (Baumol, permitting is hard, money goes into many inefficient small and important things)

there's no need for asteroid mining, there's need for investing in things that improve productivity, and that's basically cheaper inputs (energy, logistics, other cost of living things like housing!), or improve output (education, competitiveness, better access to markets, decreasing language barriers, making bureaucracy easier and smarter, etc)

> overnment papers to stop printing, inefficiencies to solve, there's economic growth possible.

You’ve got it backwards!

If everyone is very efficient, houses are perfectly insulated and everyone replaces SUVs with bicycles, and has huge savings in the bank

GDP of the country actually goes DOWN in that scenario

Anyhow, the main point stands - if Growth is Zero, economy should be stable, not collapsing. The system should not behave like a drug addict

If growth is zero then you literally end up with a zero sum game where each person can only grow his pie by taking from someone else.

depends on prices!

if a community values bikes more than SUVs GDP can still go up.

also it depends on the SUV, are people ditching a 20 year old thing for electric bikes or ...?

hedonistic adjustments are notoriously difficult in these calculations, but also necessary.

It seems like say Kansas in the US (I am no expert on Kansas, so correct me if I am wrong), where educated ambitious young people move somewhere else. People with fewer options, or older people, stay. Greece is in the EU and there citizens have access to the EU job market. It's natural for cities and regions to concentrate opportunity. The prosperous regions can subsidize the rural parts, like they do in the US.

I looked at the population pyramid for Greece, just guessing but it looks like there are 10% fewer women in their 20s than men.

Sometimes that sort of thing is because men come to work. Sometimes it's because young women up and leave.

This article discusses educated women leaving Greece.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13607804211023521

> Greeks have not given up on sex; they are simply responding to economic incentives,

There are places in the world with far more horrible economies than Greece that have no fertility rate problems. There are places elsewhere that have much better economies, and similar fertility rate problems. It's not economics, not even a little.

When you teach your youngest generation to not want to have children, not only do they take the lesson to heart, they teach it to whatever children they do end up having by accident or apathy. Instead of going away or even just lingering, it is self-reinforcing.

"It's not economics, not even a little."

I don't think you understand the economic and quality of life decline experienced the generation that is now 30-40yo.

There may be places where worst economies, but the rate of changes counts as well. The middle and lower class were at least 3-4x better off 20 years ago than what they are today.

You're wrong, it has to do with culture. Very little is effected by economics.

It reminds me a lot like hobbies people associate with rich people, like traveling.

If traveling is a real hobby for you, you will find a way to do it even if you're poor like I did when I was young. For me it was through mistake airfare scanners and hostels, but some very poor 3rd world people literally just walk / bike around the world. Sleep in tents, and pan handle / or do some odd jobs for food money.

If there's a will, there's a way.

Then you'd see higher fertility among the upper class, who have it about as well as the middle class had back then. You don't though.

It's just the excuse you use for something you don't understand about yourself. Go talk to the r/childfree crowd, ask them if they'd ever do it for any amount of money. They won't, and neither would you. They at least understand themselves a little.

I agree that it is not economics, or at least that their argument about economics does not suffice.

This is not a challenge and I am genuinely curious to hear your perspective: in what way does Greece teach their youngest generation to not want to have children?

Dozens of different ways, I should think, but foremost among them is by example. If you mother only had the one child, or maybe two... you don't grow up to have seven yourself. But then they send young children to school where many or most of the teachers are childless women. Their television programming will portray most women as childless, and those without children as being the happiest, and so on. I don't know anything about Greek comedy entertainment, but if it's anything like that of the rest of the western world, there will be all those groaner jokes about how horrible having a family is.

There are other childless cultures where these aren't the major factors in childlessness, but Greece doesn't strike me as one of those.

The respectable growth number is doing a ridiculous amount of lifting in this comment. For context, the GDP growth in the US has been above 5% year over year only a few select quarters in the last ten years [0], or alternatively only one year out of the last ten years if you measure by year [1]. It's a bit of a stretch to say that Greece needs to "just" beat what the US is doing, and then some.

[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth-annual

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/full-year-gdp-gro...

And usually only when coming off a recession, when it's relatively easy to achieve high growth rates simply by putting people back to work. The last time the U.S. grew more than 5.5% YoY and it wasn't a recession recovery was 1978. More typical averages have been 2-3%.

It's almost unheard of for a developed economy to consistently grow at 5%+. To get those sort of growth rates you need robust productivity increases fueled by technology and innovation, and productivity increases have been hard to come by recently.

The population growth rate is one of the major factors of the economic growth rate. For an economy to repeatedly grow 5-10% a year, which is economic miracle territory, you almost have to be cresting the demographic transition when a large generation starts to have smaller families. That happened generations ago in Greece. To have growth like that in the face of population decline would require a resource windfall like discovering huge deposits of oil, or the discovery of some epochal technologies to boost productivity.

I agree that economic incentives can depress the birthrate, but a low birthrate depresses economic growth as well. It's a vicious cycle compounded by politics wherein the diminishing surplus generated by a shrinking workforce is used to pay for pensions and other elder benefits that don't increase productivity.

No one has figured out how to break out of this cycle once it becomes established.

> No one has figured out how to break out of this cycle once it becomes established.

I don't think that's true. Usually the way you break out of the cycle is to have a major war, pandemic, famine, or genocide, and then the survivors naturally start having more babies once it's clear that they are the survivors and all of their competition for resources has been eliminated.

The Dark Ages were followed by significant population growth in the High Middle Ages, Black Death was followed by population growth of the Rennaissance, population stagnation in Europe became population growth in the United States as the Native American genocide was completed, and WW2 was followed by the Baby Boom.

It is misleading to say that WWII was followed by the Baby Boom as people tend to infer from that that WWII caused the Baby Boom which does not really fit with the historical facts.

WWI was not followed by a Baby Boom - in fact US birth rates declined from 1909 until the middle of the Great Depression in 1935. Then birth rates started rising from before 1939 which is before WW2 even started.

How History Works made a good YouTube video on this, I'd recommend it: https://youtu.be/Ts1ZFHA4cCw

> If the economy grew a respectable 5-10%/year instead of flatlining since 2008, they would have no problem

This real problem would not be a problem if this imaginary and impossible thing has happened as well

Hungary is trying to raise the total fertility rate by... Removing personal income tax, for life, for any woman who had four or more children. It's too early to know if it'll work or not but Hungary is not "Japan bad" or "Greece bad" from the fertility standpoint.

But it's not just economical: the west worked very hard to destroy the notion of the family and worked even harder to convince women they didn't need neither any men nor any kid, while at the same time creating shitload of inflation and raising taxes like mad. Which woman wants a kid in a world where an heterosexual man is considered evil incarnate and where, anyway, there's not enough money to properly raise kids?

I'm not even starting on what is actually taught to kids these days in public schools in the west: there are parents that actually need to opt-out their fifth-graders (aka 9 to 10 years old kid) from classes teaching them to masturbate at home while making sure their parents aren't aware of it (but of course they can discuss that with the teachers)... No, I'm not making this shit up.

You want kids in today's world? Who's living in, say, the UK atm and thinking "What a great environment to raise a kid!". Who's living in, say, Springfield Ohio and actually thinking about having kids?

It's much more than just an economical failure: the west is crashing.

Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria all have fertility rates well above replacement. Yet their economies have been in freefall for at least decades.

You can find many countries for each of the permutations of fertility/gdp growth.

Fertility rate is downstream of culture, not economics.

People don't want to admit it's due to social change instead of economics.

Religious people even in the US have kids at a younger age and more of them. Even poor / middle class ones.

I think it's because we want a solution to our problems. You can usually find a solution to economic problems.

Cultural problems are nigh impossible to solve- especially by the government.

This is an interesting perspective on the left/right split. People on the left see economic problems (thus government can help), people on the right see cultural problems (thus government will not help).

Generalizing of course.

Cultural problems are solvable by government, in the form of propaganda or otherwise. Consider the actions taken by the government against smoking.

By "Otherwise", I will give the example of China and its social credit system that got people to stop spitting in the street by deducting social credit points.

The Chinese government has been pushing propaganda to increase birth rates yet the birth rate keeps declining. If you look at Chinese social media you'll see that modern Chinese young people are making fun of the government propaganda.

Social credit system is not likely to work for as long as the opportunity costs of having kids outweighs whatever punishments the government hands out for not having kids. And in a modern market economy the opportunity cost of having a child is huge indeed.

Cultural change is hard. It is very hard. If it was easy, the USSR would have succeeded in creating the New Soviet Man instead of generations of super cynical people.

People stopped smoking because it's kinda gross, not because of propaganda. Look how much more government propaganda has gone toward eliminating alcohol, weed, and other drugs. People STILL use those drugs, and in some respects they are more popular than ever.

A social credit score only works in an authoritarian regime where you can be hauled off for even slightly criticizing the government. We certainly don't want to resort to anything like that for any problem, as the "solution" is worse.

Alcohol consumption has been falling amongst the young and cigarettes were once considered very fashionable, not at all gross. It was the public health campaigns around lung cancer that changed things.

Economics describes culture. Basically all economic policy recommendations are about "hey, how 'bout a little culture shift toward denser housing, more free trade, less xenophobia when renting out, hiring"

"wanna get a bit more aggregate supply, how about letting women work, maybe even drive!?"

High fertility rates in low income countries are due to factors such as high infant mortality, the participation of children in the labor force, and provision of support for the elderly. Greece's situation, as a middle/high income country, is different.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-fertil...

That chart disproves your original point

I believe it doesn't because that chart depicts the full range of economies, whereas we are discussing only the middle/high income bracket.

True, the main reason is the current/recent economic conditions but there are also other factors for our demographic problem. Life expectancy has increased, the traditional family is changing, work/life balance has dramatically changed, relationships are different, life goals are changing, infant mortality has decreased compared to decades ago, not so many people work on the fields anymore… and many more. Hey, at least we’re not the only ones with this problem, see Japan for example.

5-10% is only realistic in economies playing catch-up. Fully developed economies grow closer to 2%.

The title does not mention sex. Poor people all over the world have more kids than we do in advanced economies. Decades of propaganda have convinced people that having a kid is dangerous, expensive, annoying, environmentally irresponsible, contributing to "overpopulation", and a task beneath the average woman. That influence was exerted without regard for societal stability and long-term viability. Now we are practically doomed to suffer from a shortage of young people as we beg them to have kids again.

Even if you were right about the cause of the problem, it is still a problem and the title just states the problem. You don't have to diagnose the cause to know that a population crash is a problem.

I've personally wanted to have kids for at least 15 years, but it seems like culturally I am on an island. It is very difficult to find a partner who is willing and able to have kids and also a good partner otherwise. I live in the US but I think all Western countries are basically like this now.

Some years ago I was mildly invested in the idea of finding 'strong dollar destinations' (locations where due to exchange rates and other economic factors the US Dollar was very performant), and using this research to weight vacation decisions that my wife and I made.

I recall that Greece was one of these locations. (Unfortunately we haven't been there yet.)

Can anyone here shed some more light on the friendliness of the locals in Greece towards (relatively) monied western vacationers? In other words, are people generally happy to welcome visitors, or are the visitors viewed as part of the problem (via, e.g. AirBnB driving up local housing costs, etc)? I know that a lot of how you're received anywhere depends on how you act, so assume that the visitor is a well-behaved westerner whom is interested in embracing the local culture and customs.

This guys YouTube channel is what you’re after.

https://youtu.be/YCOwCnFMxEs?si=haxtEC60HrhIsR5p

Does the video even answer OP's question? Skimming the topics list, it doesn't seem like any would answer OP's question of "are people generally happy to welcome visitors, or are the visitors viewed as part of the problem (via, e.g. AirBnB driving up local housing costs, etc)?"

00:00 - Introduction: Must-Know Tips for First-Time Travelers to Greece

0:32 - Tip #1: Prepare for the Summer Heat - Stay Safe Under the Sun

1:20 - Tip #2: Proper Footwear for Visiting Archaeological Sites

3:07 - Tip #3: Navigating Greek Roads - Driving Tips for Tourists

4:07 - Tip #4: Shop Hours - What to Expect During Midday Closures

5:44 - Tip #5: Toilet Etiquette - Don’t Throw Toilet Paper in the Toilet

6:06 - Tip #6: Drinking Water - Stick to Bottled Water on the Islands

6:55 - Tip #7: Personal Space - Understanding Greek Social Norms

8:47 - Tip #8: Explore Greek Cuisine - Go Beyond the Basics

15:03 - Tip #9: Pack Smart - Tips for Handling Luggage on Greek Islands

16:45 - Tip #10: Be Prepared for Strikes - Stay Informed During Your Visit

Every island is different also cultural wise. People are generally very friendly and tourism is an important revenue for many. Just go and you will be welcomed if you adapt to their normal.

I've visited the areas outside of the major metro areas (Athens, Thessaloniki) and found the vast majority of Greeks to be very friendly and family oriented. It really is a break from the American way -- you don't check a website, you ask someone or call someone. The boat is late, maybe call the captain's wife?

There's lots of real estate to rehab in all the smaller towns and even the tourist towns too. Book your flights already!

The ignorance of this thread. You are making it sound like you are going to a another planet and want to know if the local aliens are hostile or not.

Greece is a developed western country, and has a large amount of tourists, millions of them every year, and a very developed tourist industry (one of the most developed per capita in the world) and has been doing it for decades, and is happy to take your money, and doesn't care where some of the snowflakes are coming from.

I personally didn't like Athens that much, but the islands are great to visit. The whole region (from Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, and all the way to Italy) is a blast to visit.

If you've read the news recently, you'd know that in many parts of Spain, tourists are being harassed because the locals have grown tired of the endless masses of people being shipped in. In essence it's a signal to the local government that the issue is not properly managed and that the locals will seek means to push their hand if they don't address it themselves. There are numerous examples of problems, from traffic congestion, low to no living space availability, etc. So in that sense, the question raised by this comment thread is very relevant and indeed something everyone should check these days before travelling — it doesn't matter if you're going to a developed country, you might not be welcome.

That's like someone asking if it's safe to travel to Los Angeles, and answering that there have been reports of pick pockets on the New York subway.

I live in a city, not in Greece, that has banned AirBnB, but as far I know nobody cares whether you're a visitor or not. We attribute our economic problems to the locals, particularly to people who've aggressively tried to capitalize on visitors, at the cost of other residents, rather than the visitors themselves.

As much as I like AirBnB, I'm a proponent of restricting it to your primary residence within city limits, and to one secondary unit within a larger jurisdiction if you've already owned it for some period of time. As in, rent out another bedroom if you like, ideally temporarily, and the cabin you rarely use, but you can't be buying units to just list right away for visitors.

OMG? Is this comment serious? Greece is in Europe, planet earth and not a desolated land on Mars! Greeks are of Mediterranean culture, mainly open and friendly. They deal with tourists from all over the world since maaaaaaany years and they know the business. I believe that the most difficult part can be the language, as generally speaking - don't know why - in Greece not many people speak fluently English (also in Italy we have the same problem!!). Other that that, great sea, great food, great great ancient culture and history to discover, nice and bubbly people. Book your tickets and don't be afraid! And yes, greek people have two arms, two legs, two eyes and they are not little green pale creatures!! J/k, enjoy your time there, and welcome to Europe!

This comment is warranted. Dude thinks he's a king and is wondering if the peasants will harass him. No one's going to give a shit. It is for sure a strange comment.

It seems from a sibling comment that I'm totally wrong when I state that speaking English in Greece may be difficult. I stated that based on my personal perception only, so probably I'm wrong. Sorry for the misinformation.

Yes, they are friendly. It's part of the culture since ancient times -- xenophilos I believe they call it.

It came from the ancient religion, where the Gods would impersonate humans and stay at lodgings. If people were inhospitable, the Gods would curse them.

I forgot to mention though, there are those that are hostile but mainly just in the way of anarchist / commie / antifacist politics, which seems to be fairly common based on how much graffiti I saw (then again, it could just be a loud minority.) You'll see stuff like "immigrants welcome, tourists fuck off" and anti airbnb graffiti. But it's harmless, and didn't detect any of it when talking with real people.

I would not worry at all about not speaking Greek. Most Greeks speak English at a very high proficiency. It's a tourist nation, English is the language of tourists. Also, media here is consumed in the native language with subtitles.

"Education First’s 2023 English Proficiency Index (EPI) ranks 113 countries by their English skills. Greece, with an impressive score of 602, ranks 12th globally and 10th in Europe, highlighting its robust “English as a Second Language’ proficiency and comprehensive approach to language education." [0]

[0] https://www.tovima.com/society/greeces-impressive-english-pr...

You’ll have no problem whatsoever. People in Greece are generally friendly, polite and helpful, especially to most westerners. Being a mix of balkans, Eastern Europeans and with a special temperament you can feel that many Greeks have different views for specific countries ;-)

Athens is a bit different and it’s almost like a different county (I’m not living in Athens). Like most capitals and big cities around the world, people are more hectic, life is going faster and relationships along with friendliness are different.

There are many other cities and islands where the quality of life is better. Give it a try and you won’t be disappointed.

While it seems that I may have triggered some extremely negative sentiment here with my honest question, I appreciate the responses that didn't assume I think Greek people are aliens or serfs. I'm quite ignorant of the on-the-ground realities of Greek life (having not visited yet), but I've read enough to understand that the economic conditions haven't been great there for some time now. Therefore, I think it appropriate to question how outsiders might be received under the current conditions. I apologize if this wasn't clear from my original question. Another commenter was correct in identifying the news regarding local hostilities in some regions towards tourists whom are viewed to be part of the problem and therefore met with hostility.

...slowly backing away... :)

>The country is bracing for a major population collapse fuelled by plummeting numbers of births, mass emigration, and low fertility rates.

>Six years after Greece exited its financial bailout programmes, marking the official end of a painful economic crisis

There is certainly no connection

Does an ageing decreasing population matter with coming influx of the robots? What will the impact be on countries like Greece, Japan, and even China?

If they are cost effective, going to a retirement home or getting an aide will become a choice. Elderly care is expensive; I wish those robots existed already. In much of the world, this is a task that falls to the offspring since the social infrastructure is not up to the task. And naturally this artificially increases the fertility rate; people have children just to make sure they are taken of in their old age. Once the robots arrive, this will no longer be a necessity, so robotic care is arguably the morally superior option since it does not involve using people as a means to an end.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/persons-means/

If the robots come. Robots have been coming soon for an awfully long time.

Automation historically hasn’t really changed the amount of work people have to put in, other mechanisms have changed that.

An aging population means excess resources have to flow from the young to the old.

The shrinking tax base servicing a growing retiree class will now be competing with automated labor that doesn’t consume any goods or services.

TaxGPT

Essentially.

Quite fitting China, Japan, Italy, and Greece might be some of the first thrown back into palace economies.

> Does an ageing decreasing population matter with coming influx of the robots? What will the impact be on countries like Greece, Japan

Both of these countries/ethnicities are functionally extinct. It's no secret... I worked for an insurance company 5 years ago, and at one of the company luncheons a C-level was telling jokes about how they were all betting amongst themselves when the last Japanese person would be born.

So, if you like humans, and by this I mean you want them to continue to exist into the indefinite future, then all of this should alarm you. At no point in the future will the last few Greek women think "hey, let's have at least a population-stabilizing 2.1 fertility rate again".

China's on an even more unhinged course. If they were to allow it to continue naturally (if that's even the right word, given the recent one child policy), they might become extinct even faster than other countries. But there will be forced pregnancy policies (even camps) within the next decade or two, I think.

You can decide for yourself whether any of this "matters".

My maternal grandparents were both born in Greece. I looked into getting Greek citizenship and it appeared like I could have done so, however I was turned off by the mandatory military service which does not have an age limit. Perhaps relaxing the military requirement and providing a path to citizenship would help reverse the population collapse?

I thought it did have an age limit, I think 45 comes to mind for some reason?

You are correct. The mandatory military service is for males 18-45.

Thanks, another poster mentioned this. I am 40 and will plan this for when I am 45. I can’t take a full year out of my life to do military service and would happily pay the fine.

Maybe the opportunity to live and work in the European Union is worth about 12 months of military service? Do you realise what a huge opportunity that is?

If I was born in the US or Canada or, really, anywhere else, I would've gladly accepted the service for the chance to become a European citizen.

I do, and would happily start paying taxes and even invest a ton of money in the EU if I could move there. I can’t afford to take a year away from my family and business to do the military service. A few people have commented that I could pay a fine once I am 45 so I’ll plan to do that.

I was exempt from Brazilian military service due to permanently residing abroad. From a quick Google search, it seems Greece offers something similar.

Dealing with this is such a hassle. One of the reasons I left Greece was to avoid the mandatory military service. Now I have to provide seven years of evidence that I've been living abroad, and that proof has to be either university enrollment or employment. I can't cover the employment part because I've been contracting and freelancing for the past four years. There's no way I'm paying a fine of 6 to 12k euros, mostly out of principle.

There might be a good argument for just, like, not having a draft. But giving immigrants a special exception seems a bit odd. Also I really doubt a draft is holding back a demographically significant number of people.

It's a PITA but you can contact the consultae and pay a small fine if you can prove that you were never actually in greece and you've lived somewhere else the entire time.

That being said you probably want an immigration lawyer because they suck at this.

As a Greek guy, mandatory military service = doing various chores and jobs for the Greek army for a year for free, so maybe you chose well. Wait until you are 45, pay the fine and you will be fine.

I would happily pay a fine. When I was looking (7-8 years ago) I do not recall there being an option for this. I am 40 now so would happily look at doing this in 5 years. Thanks for the tip

Depending on your age and studies you might be able to skip it altogether and pay a small fine.

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